Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's innocent ear.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?
In contrast is Barry Spacks' "Freshmen":
Full of certainties and reasons,
or uncertainties and reason,
full of reasons as a conch contains the sea,
they wait; for the term's first bell;
for another mismatched wrestle through the year;
for a teacher who's religious in his art,
a wizard of a sort, to call the role
and from mere names
cause people
to appear.
The best look like the swinging door
to the Opera just before
the Marx Brothers break through.
The worst -- debased,
on the back row,
as far as one can go
from speech --
are walls where childish scribbling's been erased;
are stones
to teach.
And I am paid to ask them questions:
Dare man proceed by need alone?
Did Esau like
his pottage?
Is any heart in order after Belsen?
And when one stops to think, I'll catch his heel,
put scissors to him, excavate his chest!
Watch, freshmen, for my words about the past
can make you turn your back. I wait to throw,
most foul, most foul, the future in your face.
~ William Butler Yeats

children's authors

So, I've been on a kick of rereading my old books from childhood, partially inspired by my sister hauling them all up from the basement. I realized that I threw some of them out in the folly of youth, writing them off as too boring or "little kid" for me. Imagine my shock to find that some of them have been out of print for years, and that the classics of my youth are being replaced by Harry Potter wannabes.

When I was younger, Pippi Longstocking, The Rescuers, and The Cricket in Times Square taught me that imagination is wonderful, mice are resourceful, and cats like singing along with Slim Whitman. Good, silly, fun. Now the kids section of Barnes and Noble is filled with book after book about vampires, werewolves, magicians, and sorcerers. Is this necessarily a bad thing? No, I loved the Dealing with Dragons series when I was younger. But seriously, does a twelve year old girl need to be fantasizing about falling in love with a vampire, or a vampire/werewolf? Or whatever combo the authors of today will come up with next to sell paper?

There was only one copy of The Cricket, squelched in between multiple copies of the latest fad series.

If the writing was actually palatable, I might be able to look at this differently. But flipping through a few of these 'novels' reveals a liberal dose of melodrama and sensuality/violence in place of good writing.

There is another disturbing trend of the grade school author, most likely jumpstarted by the success of Eragon. Do I think young people should be encouraged to explore, create, and write? Yes. Do I think it should be published and held up as a standard of writing? No. Part of the reason we are so encouraged to read as kids is because reading helps us with our own writing and overall comprehension of the world. Twelve year olds should not be looking to twelve year old writing, but beyond.

Keep your heart healthy.